The second round one has all wrapped up, and round three has now begun! Congratulations to the 34 contestants who have made it through, but well done and thank you to all contestants who took part in our second round. Leading the way overall was Cas Liber (submissions) in Group B with a total of 777 points for a variety of contributions including Good Articles on Corona Borealis and Microscopium - both of which received the maximum bonus.

Special credit must be given to a number of high importance articles improved during the second round.

Coemgenus (submissions) was one of several users who worked on improving Ulysses S. Grant. Remember, you do not need to work on an article on your own - as long as each person has completed significant work on the article during 2015, multiple competitors can claim the same article.

The points varied across groups, with the lowest score required to gain automatic qualification was 68 in Group A - meanwhile the second place score in Group H was 404, which would have been high enough to win all but one of the other Groups! As well as the top two of each group automatically going through to the third round, a minimum score of 55 was required for a wildcard competitor to go through. We had a three-way tie at 55 points and all three have qualified for the next round, in the spirit of fairness. The third round ends on June 28, with the top two in each group progressing automatically while the remaining 16 highest scorers across all four groups go through as wildcards. Good luck to all competitors for the third round! Figureskatingfan (talk·contribs·email), Miyagawa (talk·contribs·email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk·contribs·email) 16:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I have drafted an article about my Father, Harold H. Hermes and his involvement at a Wright Field test pilot during WW2, especially his early work in the very first days of military and commercial helicopters. The article now is in Word 2010. It consists of about 4000 words, and 22 photographs & scans. I have a number of citations and links to other Wikipedia articles, but I know I should add more.

I am not a writer and I really do not wish to learn the entire Wiki markup language, but will do so if there is no other way.

Here is first section of my draft.

Harold H. Hermes

Harold “Hal” or “Red” Hermes (February 11, 1920 to July 31, 1989) was a noted test pilot for the Army Air Forces and later for the CAA and FAA, where he had a central role in the early days of developing, testing, and commercializing the helicopter.

Hermes was the 17th person to solo in a helicopter (June 16, 1943 in a Sikorsky XR-4A) and was part of the team that first demonstrated the helicopter’s ability to operate from a ship in the open seas. He is also known for giving helicopter lessons to 66-year-old Frank T. Coffyn, the last surviving member of Orville Wright’s flying team. In 1944, Hermes served as co-pilot on the C-69 Constellation flight that is now recognized as Orville Wright’s last airplane flight. Later in his career, Hermes had a lead role in the development and adoption of the FAA Instrument Flight Rules for helicopters.

Throughout his 45-year career as a test pilot, Hermes had the honor to fly with aviation legends such as Orville Wright, Frank Coffyn, Chuck Yeager and Edwin E. Aldrin, Sr. His passion, however, was helicopters and he was proud to have worked alongside rotary-wing pioneers such as Igor Sikorsky, Les Morris, Frank Gregory, Dimittry “Jimmy” Viner, Charles Kaman, Floyd Carlson, Al Bayer, Frank Peterson, Joe Mashman, Stanley Hiller, Frank Piasecki and Charles Siebel during what many consider to be the most fascinating and fertile period of helicopter history.

Any help you can give me, would be greatly appreciated. Richard Hermes, Edmonton Canada --Rhhermes (talk) 16:16, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Richard, welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy making valuable contributions to this great site.

Regarding your article, I see that your pioneering father was active for 45 years until the 1980s, and so there may be problems for me and others in finding sources about your father online. It'd be great if you could provide some print (or any other) references about your father and his work so the article could pass Wikipedia's guideline for notability regarding individuals. Most of the other issues you mentioned can be resolved quite quickly.

Hello, and thank you for your reply. Yesterday, I did review the Notability guidelines with respect to my article and believe that this question can be addressed sufficiently, although only time will tell. One of the key references that I would rely upon to prove notability is a quote from a book by Brig General Frank Gregory, who headed the entire Army Air Force helicopter program in WW2 and thereafter, saying that Hermes and the other pilots for the June 16, 1943 open seas test "had helped make aeronautical history" -- in fact he devoted one whole chapter to these tests in his book, "The Helicopter -- a pictorial history." Two other books in my possession describe these tests in the same manner. All 3 of these books are in my possession and are signed by the author with a personal notes to my father.

I can provide my draft of my research -- but please tell me how to do that. It is about 19 pages (less that 4000 words) with 23 images & photographs. Yesterday I sent requests to the copyright holders on these photographs in order to be able to upload them and use them in the article.

I also made progress yesterday learning a bit of the Wiki markup language, so that is going well. I have started drafting the article in my sandbox....can you access that? Rhhermes (talk) 11:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

I can see the work that you're doing in your sandbox, which I think is fine. I believe that, with the references, notability has been established in this case. Regarding the draft, perhaps you could just copy and paste it onto your sandbox for others to see.

Do you have any interest in writing two paragraphs about paid editing for the SignPost?

I offered to help put something together that's a collection of short viewpoints that answer two questions: What is the overall effect of paid editing on the project and what can be done to handle it better.

The idea is that a lot of the Signpost stories on paid editing are written by editors with strong opinions, extreme views, or financial interests, and I wanted something a little more balanced and reasonable. Editors with strong views are never ideal in article-space either!

What I've started on is located here if you have the time/interest. CorporateM (Talk) 19:15, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

The finals for the 2015 Wikicup has now begun! Congrats to the 8 contestants who have survived to the finals, and well done and thanks to everyone who took part in rounds 3 and 4.

In round 3, we had a three-way tie for qualification among the wildcard contestants, so we had 34 competitors. The leader was by far Casliber (submissions) in Group B, who earned 1496 points. Although 913 of these points were bonus points, he submitted 15 articles in the DYK category. Second place overall was Coemgenus (submissions) at 864 points, who although submitted just 2 FAs for 400 points, earned double that amount for those articles in bonus points. Everyone who moved forward to Round 4 earned at least 100 points.

The scores required to move onto the semifinals were impressive; the lowest scorer to move onto the finals was 407, making this year's Wikicup as competitive as it's always been. Our finalists, ordered by round 4 score, are:

Cas Liber (submissions), who is competing in his sixth consecutive Wikicup final, again finished the round in first place, with an impressive 1666 points in Pool B. Casliber writes about the natural sciences, including ornithology, botany and astronomy. A large bulk of his points this round were bonus points.

Cwmhiraeth (submissions), first in Pool A, came in third. His specialty is natural science articles; in Round 4, he mostly submitted articles about insects and botany. Five out of the six of the GAs he submitted were level-4 vital articles.

Rationalobserver (submissions), from Pool B, came in seventh overall. RO earned the majority of her points from GARs and PRs, many of which were earned in the final hours of the round.

Calvin999 (submissions), also from Pool B, who was competing with RO for the final two spots in the final hours, takes the race for most GARs and PRs—48.

The intense competition between RO and Calvin999 will continue into the finals. They're both eligible for the Newcomers Trophy, given for the first time in the Wikicup; whoever makes the most points will win it.

Good luck to the finalists; the judges are sure that the competition will be fierce!

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Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 02:35, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

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Hi Phil. A summary of a Featured Article you nominated at WP:FAC will appear on the Main Page soon. It mostly follows the lead section; how does it look? - Dank (push to talk) 01:39, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Please help me become a good Wikipedian by adopting me. I'm easy to teach, and good at asking questions. I'm most interested in editing things of a social, political, legal, psychological and technolgical nature, especially where relevant to me in my world, country, and local community.
Thanks,Layman, Esq. (talk) 04:14, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015 is now in the books! Congrats to our finalists and winners, and to everyone who took part in this year's competition.

This year's results were an exact replica of last year's competition. For the second year in a row, the 2015 WikiCup champion is Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points). All of his points were earned for an impressive 253 featured pictures and their associated bonus points (5060 and 1695, respectively). His entries constituted scans of currency from all over the world and scans of medallions awarded to participants of the U.S. Space program. Cwmhiraeth (submissions) came in second place; she earned by far the most bonus points (4082), for 4 featured articles, 15 good articles, and 147 DYKs, mostly about in her field of expertise, natural science. Cas Liber (submissions), a finalist every year since 2010, came in third, with 2379 points.

Our newcomer award, presented to the best-performing new competitor in the WikiCup, goes to Rationalobserver (submissions). Everyone should be very proud of the work they accomplished. We will announce our other award winners soon.

We warmly invite all of you to sign up for next year's competition. Discussions and polls concerning potential rules changes are also open, and all are welcome to participate. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2016 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

Hello TWL users! We hope JSTOR has been a useful resource for your work. We're organizing a cleanup drive to correct dead links to JSTOR articles – these require JSTOR access and cannot easily be corrected by bot. We'd love for you to jump in and help out!

Hello everyone, and we would like to wish you all a happy holiday season. As you will probably already know, the 2016 WikiCup begins in the new year; there is still time to sign up. There are some changes we'd like to announce before the competition begins.

After two years of serving as WikiCup judge, User:Miyagawa has stepped down as judge. He deserves great thanks and recognition for his dedication and hard work, and for providing necessary transition for a new group of judges in last year's Cup. Joining Christine (User:Figureskatingfan) and Jason (User:Sturmvogel 66) is Andrew (User:Godot13), a very successful WikiCup competitor and expert in Featured Pictures; he won the two previous competitions. This is a strong judging team, and we anticipate lots of enjoyment and good work coming from our 2016 competitors.

We would also like to announce one change in how this year's WikiCup will be run. In the spirit of sportsmanship, Godot13 and Cwmhiraeth have chosen to limit their participation. See here for the announcement and a complete explanation of why. They and the judges feel that it will make for a more exciting, enjoyable, and productive competition.

The discussions/polls concerning the next competition's rules will be closed soon, and rules changes will be made clear on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Scoring and talk pages. The judges are committed to not repeating the confusion that occurred last year and to ensuring that the new rules are both fair and in the best interests of the competition, which is, first and foremost, about improving Wikipedia.

We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.

We are aware that in some areas the scoring bot’s numbers are a little bit off (i.e., overly generous) and are working to have that corrected as soon as possible.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:04, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.

We are aware that in some areas the scoring bot’s numbers are a little bit off (i.e., overly generous) and are working to have that corrected as soon as possible.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:08, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

That's it, the first round is done, sign-ups are closed and we're into round 2. Forty-seven competitors move into this round (a bit shy of the expected 64), and we are roughly broken into eight groups of six. The top two of each group will go through to round 3, and then the top scoring 16 "wildcards" across all groups.

Hello. I wonder if you have room for another adoptee? I have been editing and updating religious biographies, and as a new editor, the learning curve is a bit steep. I seem to have made some basic errors with issues of copyright. I need support with both the editing process (and creating new articles) as well as with finding all the right places for the information that I need. I am not yet proficient in how things work here (where to find things, how to do x or y, etc). Support with any and all of this process would be most welcome. Thanks and good wishes. AD64 (talk) 03:40, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Tupolev Tu-22M, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Zhukovsky (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Remember, if you find this source useful for your Wikipedia work, make sure to include citations with links on Wikipedia: links to partner resources are one of the few ways we can demonstrate usage and demand for accounts to our partners. The greater the linkage, the greater the likelihood a useful partnership will be renewed.

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Make sure that you can still log in to your HighBeam account; if you are having trouble feel free to contact me for more information. When your access expires you can reapply at WP:HighBeam.

Remember, if you find this source useful for your Wikipedia work, make sure to include citations with links on Wikipedia: links to partner resources are one of the few ways we can demonstrate usage and demand for accounts to our partners. The greater the linkage, the greater the likelihood a useful partnership will be renewed. For more information about citing this source, see Wikipedia:HighBeam/Citations

Write unusual articles using this partner's sources? Did access to this source create new opportunities for you in the Wikipedia community? If you have a unique story to share about your contributions, let us know and we can set up an opportunity for you to write a blog post about your work with one of our partner's resources.

Finally, we would greatly appreciate if you filled out this short survey. The survey helps us not only better serve you with facilitating this particular partnership, but also helps us discover what other partnerships and services the Wikipedia Library can offer.

I've held a Wikipedia account for a couple days now, but my first attempts at creating an article in my sandbox left a bitter taste in my mouth. If you have the time, it would be great if I could pick your brain on best practices. FYI, I'm former military working at a start up in San Francisco, so my hope is that we have some common interests. Thanks!Whatbuttondoipushagain (talk) 23:57, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Antonov An-70, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Zhukovsky (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Greetings from the Military history WikiProject! Elections for the Military history WikiProject Coordinators are currently underway, and as a member of the WikiProject you are cordially invited to take part by casting your vote(s) for the candidates on the election page. This year's election will conclude at 23:59 UTC 23 September. For the Coordinators, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:

Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a three-way tie with themselves for two FAs in each of R2, R3, and R5).

Over the course of the 2016 WikiCup the following content was added to Wikipedia (only reporting on fixed value categories): 17 Featured Articles, 183 Good Articles, 8 Featured Lists, 87 Featured Pictures, 40 In The News, and 321 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:52, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

We would like to announce the start of the 4th GA Cup, a competition that seeks to encourage the reviewing of Good article nominations! Thus far, there have been three GA Cups, which were successful in reaching our goals of significantly reducing the traditionally long queue at GAN, so we're doing it again. Currently, there are over 400 nominations listed. We hope that we can again make an impact this time.

The 4th GA Cup will begin on November 1, 2016. Four rounds are currently scheduled (which will bring the competition to a close on February 28, 2017), but this may change based on participant numbers. We may take a break in December for the holidays, depending on the results of a poll of our participants taken shortly after the competition begins. The sign-up and submissions process will remain the same, as will the scoring.

Sign-ups for the upcoming competition are currently open and will close on November 14, 2016. Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors, so sign-up now!

If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the judges.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to future GA Cup newsletters, please add or remove your name to our mailing list. If you are a participant, you will be on the mailing list no matter what as this is the easiest way to communicate between all participants.

In order to better control the quality of new pages, keep out the spam, and welcome the genuine newbies, the current system we introduced in 2011 is being updated and improved. The documentation and tutorials have also been revised and given a facelift. Most importantly a new user group New Page Reviewer has been created.

Under the new rule, you may find that you are temporarily unable to mark new pages as reviewed. However, this is nothing to worry about - most current experienced patrollers are being accorded the the new right without the need to apply, and if you have significant previous experience of patrolling new pages, we strongly encourage you to apply for the new right as soon as possible - we need all the help we can get, and we are now providing a dynamic, supportive environment for your work.

Hello, Sp33dyphil. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

Hello, Sp33dyphil. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.